Kleiburg is located in the Bijlmermeer, a CIAM inspired residential expansion of Amsterdam designed in the sixties by Siegfried Nassuth of the city planning department. De Bijlmer was intended as a green, light and spacious alternative for the -at that time- disintegrating inner city.

Now the area houses about 100,000 people of over 150 nationalities. The Bijlmermeer had a very optimistic start. But soon the enthusiasm for this radical residential area was overshadowed by fear-for-the-unknown. Fed by heavily economized execution, bad publicity, lack of understanding, poor maintenance and the sudden emergence of a new residential dream type -the suburban home- the Bijlmer turned into a slowly disintegrating parallel universe.

A renewal operation started in the mid nineties. The characteristic honeycomb slabs were replaced by mostly suburban substance, by ‘normality’. However it was decided to keep the most emblematic area intact -flanking the stunning, for-ever-futuristic elevated subway line. The so-called Bijlmer Museum came into being; a compact refuge for Bijlmer Believers. Kleiburg is the cornerstone of the remaining ensemble.

In anticipation to the fierce resistance by ‘believers’ and pressure by the local government, that hoped to avert demolition, Rochdale launched a campaign to rescue the building: Kleiburg was offered for ONE EURO in an attempt to catalyze alternative, economically viable plans.

Over 50 parties responded with a range of ideas from student or elderly housing to woon/werk-units, or homes for the homeless.

Four teams were selected to further develop their ideas. Ultimately Consortium De FLAT consisting of KondorWessels Vastgoed, Hendriks CPO, Vireo Vastgoed and Hollands Licht, was chosen with their proposal to turn Kleiburg into a Klusflat. ‘Klussen’ translates as to do it yourself.

The idea was to renovate the main structure -elevators, galleries, installations- but to leave the apartments unfinished and unfurnished: no kitchen, no shower, no heating, no rooms. This would minimize the initial investments and as such created a new business model for housing in the Netherlands.

The ambition was to open up new ways to live, to offer new typologies by combining two flats (or even more!) into one, by making vertical and horizontal connections.

By many, repetition was perceived as evil. Most attempts to renovate residential slabs in the Bijlmer had focused on differentiation, the objective, presumably, to get rid of the uniformity, to ‘humanize’ the architecture.

In the eighties three shafts had been added on the outside featuring extra elevators: although they look ‘original’ they don’t belong there, they introduce disruptive verticality. But it turned out that these concrete additions could be removed. There was still enough space in the existing shafts; new elevators could actually be placed inside the existing cores. And the brutal beauty of the horizontal balusters could be restored!

Originally the storage spaces for all the units were located on ground floor creating an impenetrable area, a ‘dead zone’ at the foot of the building. By relocating the storerooms to the upper levels near the elevators the ground level could be freed up for more interactive forms of inhabitation: apartments, workspaces, daycare. As such the plinth would be activated: a social base embedded in the park.

The interior street that served as the connector between parking garages and elevator cores was a fundamental ingredient of the Bijlmer. It was located on the first floor at plus three meters and forced the underpasses to become low. And unpleasant. But since lowering the elevated roads was one of the central ideas of the renewal of the area the inner street became obsolete. Now larger openings could be created connecting both sides of the building in a more scenic and generous way.

On the galleries the division between inside and outside was rather defensive: closed, not very welcoming. There was room for improvement. The opaque parts of the facade were replaced with double glass. By opening-up, the facade becomes a personal carrier of the identity (even with curtains closed).

In addition a catalogue of facade modules was created from which the future inhabitants could choose a set of window frames that would match the customized layout of their FLATs: openable parts, sliding doors, double doors, a set-back that creates space for plants or people. As such a personal ‘interface’ could come into being that could activate the galleries.